First we had smart phones. Then we were promised smart homes. Now, if AT&T has its way, we’ll all be living in smart cities.
And
it’s not thinking small, either. “We believe the scale is big,”
explained AT&T Mobility CEO Glenn Lurie in an interview this week.
“Real-time data on every aspect of the city.” From traffic and road
maintenance, to parking and digital signage on public transit, to water
supply and waste management — that is, garbage — AT&T thinks it can
help cities manage everything better.
The
telecom giant is partnering with a who’s who of Big Data (Cisco,
Deloitte, Ericsson, GE, IBM, Intel, Qualcomm) to create a “smart cities
framework.” With its partners, AT&T is aiming to be a one-stop shop
for municipalities, states, and the federal agencies looking to service
citizens more effectively.
Cash-strapped cities
AT&T
knows that it can’t just make promises. It needs to deliver the goods
for cash-strapped cities. “Each city has a different goal and different
financials,” says Lurie. “What are these things really going to do?” In
Lurie’s words, the goal is to make cities “a better place to live.” If
AT&T can help a city improve the lives of its citizens in a
concrete, measurable way (especially if it can help a near-broke
government save some money), it believes the market potential is simply
enormous.
“You
have to prove that there’s a payback for the city,” says Lurie. “Make
it a city where people want to live and drive economic growth.” It could
be smart lighting that uses less energy or connected traffic lights
that double as vehicle-to-vehicle communications and Wi-Fi access
points. If a city can connect all these utilities together and provide
real-time data, it has the potential to make things much more efficient.
Working
with governments is a huge opportunity, but it also requires some
out-of-the-box thinking when it comes to financing. “We have to be very
flexible and willing to look at new business models,” says Lurie. “My
guess is each city will be different. Each will be a custom deal.” He
says AT&T needs to be innovative in how it does business.
Spend now, save later
One
thing that makes governments unique is their ability to be forward
thinking, if they have the right management. If a city can spend $500
million today to save $2 billion over 20 years, that might make a lot of
sense. For a company that can’t see beyond the next quarter, that’s a
much bigger ask. And that’s where AT&T’s biggest hurdle lies:
proving that their solutions will actually work.
To
try and prove that, AT&T is announcing initial smart city framework
deployments in Atlanta, Chicago, and Dallas. Though the announcement is
lacking in specifics, Lurie thinks those cities will begin to see
benefits this year.
In
what will either be a prescient prediction or a massive case of
institutional hubris, Lurie compared the smart cities movement to the
launch of the iPhone eight years ago. “All of a sudden, the world
changed,” he says. There are things that people simply expect now that
were unimaginable before the iPhone.
“This is exciting on so many levels. We’re scratching the surface of what this can be.”By: Jordan Golson (The Verge).
Review: Emerging Market Formulations & Research Unit, Flagship Records.
For The #FacebookTeam